Hilary Duff’s Most Candid Quotes About Motherhood, Raising Kids

From one mom to another. Hilary Duff has always come clean about her parenting journey over the years.

The How I Met Your Father star welcomed her son, Luca, with ex-husband Mike Comrie in 2012. The former couple called it quits four years later. Duff went on to become a mother of three with the birth of her two daughters, Banks and Mae, with husband Matthew Koma in 2018 and 2021, respectively.

Being a parent comes with its fair share of struggles, and the actress continuously uses her platform to open about her motherhood highs and lows. One year after giving birth to her first child, the “Sparks” singer shared some of the challenges she faced as a new parent.

“Exhaustion is a good one to start with,” she told Us Weekly exclusively in May 2013. “You’re very sleep-deprived. Sometimes you have a crying baby and you can’t do anything to get them to stop crying … you feel, as their mom, that you should be able to have all the answers and be able to take care of them so easily.”

Joking that “babies don’t come with a manual,” the former Disney Channel star continued, “It’s easy to get frustrated and it’s easy to blame yourself — especially being sleep-deprived and on a hormonal roller-coaster!”

Luckily, Duff’s own mother was more than happy to lend a helping hand with a then-baby Luca. “She’s been so great — helping me with the baby, coming over when I need to take a nap or escape for a little bit,” she told Us. “My husband is amazing, too. If I want to run out of the house for an hour to go work out or go meet a friend for lunch, I can. I think that’s really important.”

In addition to leaning on her family, the Lizzie McGuire alum has also gotten help from her furry friends. Shortly after welcoming Banks, Duff revealed that her and Koma’s dog, Momo, had been useful in keeping Luca occupied while she attended to her then-newborn.

“[Momo] has completely changed our household. I really can’t imagine what it was like before having him,” she admitted while giving a speech at an event in December 2018. “My son and him roughhouse every single day and burn energy together, and like I said, I recently just had a baby and I had her at home, and there wasn’t a step I took throughout the household that Momo didn’t follow me and curl up next to me. He was glued to me through the entire process.”

The Younger alum has also learned how to face public criticism about her parenting choices. Duff came under fire in November 2021 for piercing then-7-month-old Mae’s ears. “Yes! I pierced her ears today,” she captioned a photo of her daughter’s new look via her Instagram Story. “Can’t wait for the internet to call me a child abuser … again. Lesss go.”

She spoke out again in February 2022 after receiving backlash over a photo of Banks sitting in her car on her friend Molly Bernard’s lap, rather than being in a booster seat. “Do you know how many times I let my kids sit on my front seat once we get [close to our driveway] to pretend like they’re driving home?” she stated in an interview with Romper. “You’re telling me you’ve never put your kid in the backseat to drive a block before with an adult back there?”

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